The NRA among others keeps track of crime statistics. The gun control activists hate it when a permissive gun carrying law is enacted, because crime drops dramatically, immediately. Instead, the activists try to cover up those statistics, pointing to another part of the country and crying about all the shootings there.
You can't convince a zealot.
The sunsabitches who spend so much time trying to take our rights away, will NOT be found volunteering to work with youth, or counseling first time offenders of minor crimes. It is more to their advantage to have youth and minor offenders graduate to more serious criminal activity, thereby giving the activist yet more ammunition with which to infringe on honest people's rights.
Please, show me where I said that it was alright for ISP's to give priority to a protocol? I am studying very closely exactly what I typed. I believe that I CONDEMNED protocol priority as a poor practice put in place by money grubbing people who wish to maximize their profit, at my expense. Why don't you read my words again, to confirm that I said what I meant to say?
Overselling bandwidth is the root cause for traffic shaping at the ISP level and higher. Traffic shaping at the user's level is reasonable and acceptable. Traffic shaping anywhere on the other side of my modem is completely UNACCEPTABLE.
Whether my connection is 56k, 1MB, or 5GB, that bandwidth should be available to me, 24/7, to use in any fashion that I wish to use it, whether that use is FTP, P2P, HTTP downloads, VoIP, streaming, or any other protocol, past, present, or future.
For the ISP to throttle or prioritize any protocol that I wish to use amounts to a breach of contract, because they SOLD me that bandwidth.
Have you ever watched a group of children, who are working hard to learn communication skills? For want of a real word, they will make up a word, spur of the moment, and agree to it's meaning amongst themselves.
Incentivized is just such a word. A group of people were having a discussion, and none of them had sufficient knowledge of the English language to express themselves. One of the ignorant and juvenile individuals tried incentivized, and the rest of those ignorant individuals thought it sounded cool. Instant acceptance.
Groups of people all over the English speaking world do this, and those pretend words manage to get adopted into this niche or that. They look at technology fields, where jargon is essential, then claim to be following the example of scientists, engineers, and technicians. That is pure bullshit. The tech people make up words for concepts that don't EXIST, until they discover the concept. Incentivized is the mark of an ignorant, uneducated poser who is trying to pass himself off as a manager, or as an executive.
Stop sounding retarded, people. It's far more respectable to admit that you don't know the proper term, pull out a thesaurus, and FIND a term, than it is to make up idiot baby talk.
I have actually walked away from discussions in which one clown or another starts with the baby talk. If they don't have the decency to learn to speak their native language properly, they don't deserve the respect implied by listening to them.
Net neutrality does not imply acceptance of illegal conduct. Please, install my bot, so that I can harvest all of your financial information, then buy myself a new electric automobile. Afterwards, you can come back and post here about net neutrality, mmmkay?
Filesharing is NOT a criminal activity. RIAA is more akin to the criminals in the article than file sharers are. The clients who support RIAA have raped copyright law to the point it is unrecognizable. Fair use is all but history, DRM ensures that most people can't reasonably use their purchases in a fair manner.
IF AND WHEN filesharing is proven to be "unlawful" (as opposed to "illegal") it is a CIVIL matter, as opposed to a criminal offense. As a rule, unlawful and/or illegal acts take place well before the file is shared, as in the case of a Universal Studios employee stealing an early copy of a movie. In such a case, there are multiple civil and criminal actions that can be taken against the perpetrator. The file sharing, in and of itself, is not criminal, and if it is ever made so, that will be a gross violation of all the freedoms guaranteed by the United States consitution.
Giving priority to one protocol over another is NOT net neutrality. Net neutrality, in a VERY short phrase, ensures that the end user can use his bandwidth as he see fit without conforming to other's expectations.
To imply otherwise exposes an agenda. In the case of telcos, the agenda is pretty clear - they want to reserve the bulk of their bandwidth for traditional telephonic services because those services pay more than internet television, VoIP, and P2P.
You don't think that MS might have coded this "feature" into Windows, do you? Nahhh. Windows would never do anything so unscrupulous. Wait - what's that in my sig? Hmmm - gotta think about this...
Yes, that was me. I opened Excel, but couldn't figure out how to open a document. So, I double clicked the Excel document, and watched another instance of Excel open up, with that document in it. Read the thing, managed to diddle around with the document a little bit, then stared at the screen wondering "How the hell do I close this thing?" FINALLY, I just started clicking all over the place, and when I clicked the logo, I got a menu. I hadn't yet exhausted my supply of invective, fortunately. When I run out, I tend to throw things out the door.
(Wife says, "Why is my phone out in the yard?" I answered, "I couldn't hear a damned thing on it, and got tired of it ringing!" She says, "Did you turn it on?" "I guess so, I pushed every button on the damned thing!" "The GREEN button!" "You forget I'm fucking COLOR BLIND and all the print is to damned small to see???"
\sarcasmon\ But, Microsoft has made so much money with the idea, it HAS to be right! \end sarcasm\
I really don't like anything about the MS Office interface, so why would I be happy to see it on OOo? I was angered when I first ran into a PDF, only to find that I must download a huge bloated software from Adobe in order to read the damned thing. I was even more angered to find that only MS Office could display other types of documents. That has largely been cured, but some of Office's macros STILL won't work on anything but MS Office. So, I have Office.
The day that ALL office documents work 100% on a competitor's office suite, I'll rip MS Office out of every machine I own.
And, I won't appreciate any reminders of MS Office at all. OOo will get hate mail from me over this.
I dunno. Given a little more jungle clearing, and a little more urban sprawl - we may just get rid of all the pesky vegetation within a couple more decades. I guess we can examine the idea of electrolysis for our oxygen. No biggie, I imagine.
If Apple were to get away with censorship, and no one complained, who might follow Apple's example? Maybe the Bing-a-lings who run Microsoft? And, if no one objects to MS censoring what MS customers can see on the net, then who is next?
Yeah, I know, lots of people don't buy the slippery slope arguments. Buy it or not, give it some thought.
The developers who are fighting Apple on this are doing us all a service, believe it or not.
"Is there anything that can be done to stop (and reverse) this DNS breakage trend?"
Of course there is. This is really only affecting people who use the ISP's default DNS server. You can choose to set up your own DNS server, which is moderatly complicated for people with no background. Additionally, your computer can be set to use an alternative DNS server such as OpenDNS, bypassing your ISP's DNS server.
One would begin by reconfiguring the modem/router to use a server such as OpenDNS, FoolDNS, or some other server more to your liking.
2nd step (optional) would be to install a server on the gateway machine, then configure that server to query the modem/router when it needs routing data.
3rd step is simply to reconfigure all the machines on the network to query the gateway machine if you chose to set up your own server, or to query the modem/router if you chose not to install a server.
Problem solved.
One side benefit of using OpenDNS or FoolDNS, is that they filter SOME of the malware distribution sites. They can't get them all, and if they did, people might complain, but they filter a lot of the worst.
Other posts address different parts of your question - some are good, others are ignoramus comments made by people without a clue. I'll address more directly the difference between a firearm, and social networking.
The uses of firearms are covered extensively in boot camp, again in advanced training, and almost daily after a soldier joins his command. Firepower is what the Marines are all about. Or, more accurately, firepower, and it's lawful, efficient use. "Every Marine is a rifleman" There is no aspect of the Marine Corps that ignores small arms, there is no Marine who lacks proficiency with small arms. All in all, mastery of a rifle is a relatively simple skill, and understanding the lawful uses of a firearm is also relatively simple.
Social networking is a very complicated thing, though. Just who is in YOUR network? Do you really know? Personally, I've invited freinds to my facebook account whom I only vaguely know, from interaction on the internet. I've never met them face to face. Even if I only invited people that I've physically met, what about the "freind of a freind" that they introduce to my network?
How do you know that you have no connections through myspace who are Al Queda operatives, or Russian intel, or Chinese intel, or whatever? I know that one of my own connections is Israeli, and that he has a military background, but I have no idea if he might be part Israel's intel community.
Consider the old "loose lips sink ships". If a young corporal in the Marines is being deployed somewhere, and the deployment is ultra top secret, he understands that he can't post things to his blog that might alert people to his destination. But, what if he slips up? "Martha, I don't have much time, but I managed to buy some souvenirs in Kirkut and mail them - they should be there soon! Love ya, Dilbert"
So, who in all of the big wide world is suddenly privy to the information that the First Marine Division is in Kirkut, or at least passing through Kirkut?
There has always been a requirement that military personnel report contacts with citizens of nations that are hostile and/or unfreindly with the US. How do you identify such citizens on Twitter?
Socializing is much, much, much more complicated than the proper use of a weapon. If you don't believe me, just think about your relationship with your significant other. Can you take him/her out of the closet, use and abuse her, then clean her, oil her, and stuff her back into the closet and forget about her until the next time you need/want to use her? Doesn't work, does it?
Personally, I'll trust any Marine to use his weapon properly. But, from personal experience, I KNOW that a number of soldiers and sailors are total idiots in social life.
Ahhh. Interesting. Glad I didn't run at the mouth more than I did, lol
I turn power management off on my machines, the only thing that ever is turned off is the monitor. (a hold over from the days of CRT's that used more power than all the rest of the computer) If I used laptops, this would be pretty important, though.
"it looks to be slower overall then xp AND Vista.. "
Well - that isn't my personal experience. Win7 has disappointed me in a few respects, but overall, I think that it is as fast as XP. I don't rely on benchmarks - user's subjective experience takes priority with me.
Some programs and utilities seem to break Win7. Avanquest products, for instance, produce some odd results on 7. But, I'm confident that things like that will be fixed.
The thing that I like best about Win7, is that it will run on almost any hardware with a 1Ghz+ CPU, unlike that abomination they called Vista.
Like yourself, I don't rely on reviews found on the web. Far to many reviewers are getting kickbacks in one form or another. (free equipment for testing purposes, early access to new software, maybe even invitations to events with free booze and wild women - who knows what the "big guys" get in exchange for their advertising?) I have to test drive stuff myself. I've installed and broken Win7 at least 8 times now. (No, I don't really count the instalations.) If/when I decide to install Win7 onto a machine for other than test purposes, I'm confident that users will consider it to be equal to XP. Those who fall in love with eye candy will think it superior, but that's just a matter of taste, rather than usefulness.
"I think though by accident you have pointed out why it is so damned hard to get Linux guys to "get it". It is because they expect folks to think."
No, I don't. All that I can ever do, is to present concepts and ideas to windows users, such as, "Linux doesn't GET viruses and malware like you get on Windows." But, I don't expect more than one user in 100 to actually think, or to "get it". I CERTAINLY don't expect a windows user to think "like I do". But, it would be nice if they actually had a thought now and then.
Odd, though. It seems that Linux is gaining popularity outside of the US and the old British Commonwealth countries. Could it be that we English speakers are handicapped thinkers?
An update broke your hard drive? Huh? (sarcasm on) Oh wait, yes, I remember. MS put out a knowledge base item, warning of possible high pitched screeching noises after applying certain updates. The work around is to replace the loose nut on the keyboard. (sarcasm off)
"Hell most Mac and Windows users don't even know there IS a CLI interface"
You hold out the incompetent users to exemplify what is best about Windows? (obligatory automotive analogy) That's like saying that because some moron can't drive a stick shift, that all stick shifts are worthless. Because idiots forget to dim their highbeams, any car that doesn't dim it's own lights are worthless. Because idiots don't even notice when an idiot light comes on, gauges, warning lights, and warning buzzers are a waste. A competent driver needs only a power train - paint, trim, air conditioning, etc are just extras.
The competent Windows admins routinely use CLI, don't they? Windows is pushing their PowerShell, for administrative use. Even Microsoft is aware that the command line is an efficient, not to mention powerful, tool for administration. There are times when the pretty GUI fails, or lacks a feature, or wastes time. Like the competent driver, just about all that the competent user of an operating system needs is a file system, and some commands.
It's alright that an OS offers a GUI, and tools that enable the incompetent to accomplish a few tasks, and to amuse themselves. That doesn't make the OS "good", or "better", or whatever. That only makes it popular among incompetents and idiots.
Show me a sys admin who avoids the command line. I'll show you an incompetent fake.
You have designed 20 games? Do something with them. What is stopping you? At the VERY LEAST, get some people playing them to test them out.
How about me? Zero, zip, zilch. The closest I'm willing to get to most games is to look over my son's shoulders while they play. Then, the wife has her online games that she likes, and I'm no more interested in those.
But, if you've designed a good game, I'd be willing to alpha test it. I prefer RPG's and space simulations. I do NOT do games where you mindlessly cruise the streets of a realistic city, searching people out to kill them in drug wars and crap.
You could have googled a legal definition. I'll note that "from collusive agreements" fits MS exactly.
"An economic advantage held by one or more persons or companies deriving from the exclusive power to carry on a particular business or trade or to manufacture and sell a particular item, thereby suppressing competition and allowing such persons or companies to raise the price of a product or service substantially above the price that would be established by a free market."
Even in Al Capone's Chicago, other people produced and sold alcohol. Al still had a monopoly.
You can't possibly believe that Microsoft got where it is today by embracing "free trade". How many individual companies did they bankrupt or otherwise run out of business, often times with the mere threat of a lawsuit that the smaller company couldn't afford to fight?
Let's not be pissy, alright? I already pointed out that our intel community can be frigging idiots. I said that in this particular case, I believed my government's claims. Check out my posts in the political forum at mauisun.org starting months before the invasion of Iraq. Or, you can double check what the intel community said independently. The intel community told George Bush that Iraq had almost no WMD capability, and that they had no ties to Al Queda. Don't confuse the failure of the administration with failure of the intel community. George Bush acted in spite of everything that the CIA told him, then spent years trying to twist CIA reports to fit his agenda.;-)
Actually, I think that grrls don't try. If grrls wanted to create really cool games, there are plenty of open source (free) game engines available, with which to experiment and gain experience. Or, they could hack/crack existing game engines, and start building their games. Instead, grrls just accept the games that are on the market, then whine about the lack of women in the gaming industry because it's fashionable.
How do you think guys get experience? There's a game builder course at Berkeley?
Start coding something. If grrls won't play it, then maybe you'll have to admit that guyz have all the cool ideas, huh?
It's easier for ethnic and gender minorities to get grants and loans from the government to start up a business than it is for white males, after all. Go for it. Put my tax money to good use. I'd rather see you start up a feminine oriented gaming company, than to see a bunch of losers getting thousands of dollars worth of discounts so that they can buy automobiles from a failed induestry.
The NRA among others keeps track of crime statistics. The gun control activists hate it when a permissive gun carrying law is enacted, because crime drops dramatically, immediately. Instead, the activists try to cover up those statistics, pointing to another part of the country and crying about all the shootings there.
You can't convince a zealot.
The sunsabitches who spend so much time trying to take our rights away, will NOT be found volunteering to work with youth, or counseling first time offenders of minor crimes. It is more to their advantage to have youth and minor offenders graduate to more serious criminal activity, thereby giving the activist yet more ammunition with which to infringe on honest people's rights.
Please, show me where I said that it was alright for ISP's to give priority to a protocol? I am studying very closely exactly what I typed. I believe that I CONDEMNED protocol priority as a poor practice put in place by money grubbing people who wish to maximize their profit, at my expense. Why don't you read my words again, to confirm that I said what I meant to say?
Overselling bandwidth is the root cause for traffic shaping at the ISP level and higher. Traffic shaping at the user's level is reasonable and acceptable. Traffic shaping anywhere on the other side of my modem is completely UNACCEPTABLE.
Whether my connection is 56k, 1MB, or 5GB, that bandwidth should be available to me, 24/7, to use in any fashion that I wish to use it, whether that use is FTP, P2P, HTTP downloads, VoIP, streaming, or any other protocol, past, present, or future.
For the ISP to throttle or prioritize any protocol that I wish to use amounts to a breach of contract, because they SOLD me that bandwidth.
To the mod who called this "flamebait":
Have you ever watched a group of children, who are working hard to learn communication skills? For want of a real word, they will make up a word, spur of the moment, and agree to it's meaning amongst themselves.
Incentivized is just such a word. A group of people were having a discussion, and none of them had sufficient knowledge of the English language to express themselves. One of the ignorant and juvenile individuals tried incentivized, and the rest of those ignorant individuals thought it sounded cool. Instant acceptance.
Groups of people all over the English speaking world do this, and those pretend words manage to get adopted into this niche or that. They look at technology fields, where jargon is essential, then claim to be following the example of scientists, engineers, and technicians. That is pure bullshit. The tech people make up words for concepts that don't EXIST, until they discover the concept. Incentivized is the mark of an ignorant, uneducated poser who is trying to pass himself off as a manager, or as an executive.
Stop sounding retarded, people. It's far more respectable to admit that you don't know the proper term, pull out a thesaurus, and FIND a term, than it is to make up idiot baby talk.
I have actually walked away from discussions in which one clown or another starts with the baby talk. If they don't have the decency to learn to speak their native language properly, they don't deserve the respect implied by listening to them.
"like a bunch of 1940s-era Germans digging-up bodies and burning them to hide the evidence"
I thought "Godwin", but I agree with the idea behind your post. There will be a MS fanboi along presently to invoke Godwin's law, though.
Net neutrality does not imply acceptance of illegal conduct. Please, install my bot, so that I can harvest all of your financial information, then buy myself a new electric automobile. Afterwards, you can come back and post here about net neutrality, mmmkay?
Filesharing is NOT a criminal activity. RIAA is more akin to the criminals in the article than file sharers are. The clients who support RIAA have raped copyright law to the point it is unrecognizable. Fair use is all but history, DRM ensures that most people can't reasonably use their purchases in a fair manner.
IF AND WHEN filesharing is proven to be "unlawful" (as opposed to "illegal") it is a CIVIL matter, as opposed to a criminal offense. As a rule, unlawful and/or illegal acts take place well before the file is shared, as in the case of a Universal Studios employee stealing an early copy of a movie. In such a case, there are multiple civil and criminal actions that can be taken against the perpetrator. The file sharing, in and of itself, is not criminal, and if it is ever made so, that will be a gross violation of all the freedoms guaranteed by the United States consitution.
RIAA is little more than an Americanized Gestapo.
Giving priority to one protocol over another is NOT net neutrality. Net neutrality, in a VERY short phrase, ensures that the end user can use his bandwidth as he see fit without conforming to other's expectations.
To imply otherwise exposes an agenda. In the case of telcos, the agenda is pretty clear - they want to reserve the bulk of their bandwidth for traditional telephonic services because those services pay more than internet television, VoIP, and P2P.
You don't think that MS might have coded this "feature" into Windows, do you? Nahhh. Windows would never do anything so unscrupulous. Wait - what's that in my sig? Hmmm - gotta think about this...
Yes, that was me. I opened Excel, but couldn't figure out how to open a document. So, I double clicked the Excel document, and watched another instance of Excel open up, with that document in it. Read the thing, managed to diddle around with the document a little bit, then stared at the screen wondering "How the hell do I close this thing?" FINALLY, I just started clicking all over the place, and when I clicked the logo, I got a menu. I hadn't yet exhausted my supply of invective, fortunately. When I run out, I tend to throw things out the door.
(Wife says, "Why is my phone out in the yard?" I answered, "I couldn't hear a damned thing on it, and got tired of it ringing!" She says, "Did you turn it on?" "I guess so, I pushed every button on the damned thing!" "The GREEN button!" "You forget I'm fucking COLOR BLIND and all the print is to damned small to see???"
\sarcasmon\ But, Microsoft has made so much money with the idea, it HAS to be right! \end sarcasm\
I really don't like anything about the MS Office interface, so why would I be happy to see it on OOo? I was angered when I first ran into a PDF, only to find that I must download a huge bloated software from Adobe in order to read the damned thing. I was even more angered to find that only MS Office could display other types of documents. That has largely been cured, but some of Office's macros STILL won't work on anything but MS Office. So, I have Office.
The day that ALL office documents work 100% on a competitor's office suite, I'll rip MS Office out of every machine I own.
And, I won't appreciate any reminders of MS Office at all. OOo will get hate mail from me over this.
I dunno. Given a little more jungle clearing, and a little more urban sprawl - we may just get rid of all the pesky vegetation within a couple more decades. I guess we can examine the idea of electrolysis for our oxygen. No biggie, I imagine.
incentivized? WTF? What language do you normally speak? Martian?
If Apple were to get away with censorship, and no one complained, who might follow Apple's example? Maybe the Bing-a-lings who run Microsoft? And, if no one objects to MS censoring what MS customers can see on the net, then who is next?
Yeah, I know, lots of people don't buy the slippery slope arguments. Buy it or not, give it some thought.
The developers who are fighting Apple on this are doing us all a service, believe it or not.
"Is there anything that can be done to stop (and reverse) this DNS breakage trend?"
Of course there is. This is really only affecting people who use the ISP's default DNS server. You can choose to set up your own DNS server, which is moderatly complicated for people with no background. Additionally, your computer can be set to use an alternative DNS server such as OpenDNS, bypassing your ISP's DNS server.
One would begin by reconfiguring the modem/router to use a server such as OpenDNS, FoolDNS, or some other server more to your liking.
2nd step (optional) would be to install a server on the gateway machine, then configure that server to query the modem/router when it needs routing data.
3rd step is simply to reconfigure all the machines on the network to query the gateway machine if you chose to set up your own server, or to query the modem/router if you chose not to install a server.
Problem solved.
One side benefit of using OpenDNS or FoolDNS, is that they filter SOME of the malware distribution sites. They can't get them all, and if they did, people might complain, but they filter a lot of the worst.
Other posts address different parts of your question - some are good, others are ignoramus comments made by people without a clue. I'll address more directly the difference between a firearm, and social networking.
The uses of firearms are covered extensively in boot camp, again in advanced training, and almost daily after a soldier joins his command. Firepower is what the Marines are all about. Or, more accurately, firepower, and it's lawful, efficient use. "Every Marine is a rifleman" There is no aspect of the Marine Corps that ignores small arms, there is no Marine who lacks proficiency with small arms. All in all, mastery of a rifle is a relatively simple skill, and understanding the lawful uses of a firearm is also relatively simple.
Social networking is a very complicated thing, though. Just who is in YOUR network? Do you really know? Personally, I've invited freinds to my facebook account whom I only vaguely know, from interaction on the internet. I've never met them face to face. Even if I only invited people that I've physically met, what about the "freind of a freind" that they introduce to my network?
How do you know that you have no connections through myspace who are Al Queda operatives, or Russian intel, or Chinese intel, or whatever? I know that one of my own connections is Israeli, and that he has a military background, but I have no idea if he might be part Israel's intel community.
Consider the old "loose lips sink ships". If a young corporal in the Marines is being deployed somewhere, and the deployment is ultra top secret, he understands that he can't post things to his blog that might alert people to his destination. But, what if he slips up? "Martha, I don't have much time, but I managed to buy some souvenirs in Kirkut and mail them - they should be there soon! Love ya, Dilbert"
So, who in all of the big wide world is suddenly privy to the information that the First Marine Division is in Kirkut, or at least passing through Kirkut?
There has always been a requirement that military personnel report contacts with citizens of nations that are hostile and/or unfreindly with the US. How do you identify such citizens on Twitter?
Socializing is much, much, much more complicated than the proper use of a weapon. If you don't believe me, just think about your relationship with your significant other. Can you take him/her out of the closet, use and abuse her, then clean her, oil her, and stuff her back into the closet and forget about her until the next time you need/want to use her? Doesn't work, does it?
Personally, I'll trust any Marine to use his weapon properly. But, from personal experience, I KNOW that a number of soldiers and sailors are total idiots in social life.
Ahhh. Interesting. Glad I didn't run at the mouth more than I did, lol
I turn power management off on my machines, the only thing that ever is turned off is the monitor. (a hold over from the days of CRT's that used more power than all the rest of the computer) If I used laptops, this would be pretty important, though.
"it looks to be slower overall then xp AND Vista.. "
Well - that isn't my personal experience. Win7 has disappointed me in a few respects, but overall, I think that it is as fast as XP. I don't rely on benchmarks - user's subjective experience takes priority with me.
Some programs and utilities seem to break Win7. Avanquest products, for instance, produce some odd results on 7. But, I'm confident that things like that will be fixed.
The thing that I like best about Win7, is that it will run on almost any hardware with a 1Ghz+ CPU, unlike that abomination they called Vista.
Like yourself, I don't rely on reviews found on the web. Far to many reviewers are getting kickbacks in one form or another. (free equipment for testing purposes, early access to new software, maybe even invitations to events with free booze and wild women - who knows what the "big guys" get in exchange for their advertising?) I have to test drive stuff myself. I've installed and broken Win7 at least 8 times now. (No, I don't really count the instalations.) If/when I decide to install Win7 onto a machine for other than test purposes, I'm confident that users will consider it to be equal to XP. Those who fall in love with eye candy will think it superior, but that's just a matter of taste, rather than usefulness.
"I think though by accident you have pointed out why it is so damned hard to get Linux guys to "get it". It is because they expect folks to think."
No, I don't. All that I can ever do, is to present concepts and ideas to windows users, such as, "Linux doesn't GET viruses and malware like you get on Windows." But, I don't expect more than one user in 100 to actually think, or to "get it". I CERTAINLY don't expect a windows user to think "like I do". But, it would be nice if they actually had a thought now and then.
Odd, though. It seems that Linux is gaining popularity outside of the US and the old British Commonwealth countries. Could it be that we English speakers are handicapped thinkers?
An update broke your hard drive? Huh? (sarcasm on) Oh wait, yes, I remember. MS put out a knowledge base item, warning of possible high pitched screeching noises after applying certain updates. The work around is to replace the loose nut on the keyboard. (sarcasm off)
"Hell most Mac and Windows users don't even know there IS a CLI interface"
You hold out the incompetent users to exemplify what is best about Windows? (obligatory automotive analogy) That's like saying that because some moron can't drive a stick shift, that all stick shifts are worthless. Because idiots forget to dim their highbeams, any car that doesn't dim it's own lights are worthless. Because idiots don't even notice when an idiot light comes on, gauges, warning lights, and warning buzzers are a waste. A competent driver needs only a power train - paint, trim, air conditioning, etc are just extras.
The competent Windows admins routinely use CLI, don't they? Windows is pushing their PowerShell, for administrative use. Even Microsoft is aware that the command line is an efficient, not to mention powerful, tool for administration. There are times when the pretty GUI fails, or lacks a feature, or wastes time. Like the competent driver, just about all that the competent user of an operating system needs is a file system, and some commands.
It's alright that an OS offers a GUI, and tools that enable the incompetent to accomplish a few tasks, and to amuse themselves. That doesn't make the OS "good", or "better", or whatever. That only makes it popular among incompetents and idiots.
Show me a sys admin who avoids the command line. I'll show you an incompetent fake.
You have designed 20 games? Do something with them. What is stopping you? At the VERY LEAST, get some people playing them to test them out.
How about me? Zero, zip, zilch. The closest I'm willing to get to most games is to look over my son's shoulders while they play. Then, the wife has her online games that she likes, and I'm no more interested in those.
But, if you've designed a good game, I'd be willing to alpha test it. I prefer RPG's and space simulations. I do NOT do games where you mindlessly cruise the streets of a realistic city, searching people out to kill them in drug wars and crap.
You could have googled a legal definition. I'll note that "from collusive agreements" fits MS exactly.
"An economic advantage held by one or more persons or companies deriving from the exclusive power to carry on a particular business or trade or to manufacture and sell a particular item, thereby suppressing competition and allowing such persons or companies to raise the price of a product or service substantially above the price that would be established by a free market."
Even in Al Capone's Chicago, other people produced and sold alcohol. Al still had a monopoly.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Monopoly
You can't possibly believe that Microsoft got where it is today by embracing "free trade". How many individual companies did they bankrupt or otherwise run out of business, often times with the mere threat of a lawsuit that the smaller company couldn't afford to fight?
Let's not be pissy, alright? I already pointed out that our intel community can be frigging idiots. I said that in this particular case, I believed my government's claims. Check out my posts in the political forum at mauisun.org starting months before the invasion of Iraq. Or, you can double check what the intel community said independently. The intel community told George Bush that Iraq had almost no WMD capability, and that they had no ties to Al Queda. Don't confuse the failure of the administration with failure of the intel community. George Bush acted in spite of everything that the CIA told him, then spent years trying to twist CIA reports to fit his agenda. ;-)
Actually, I think that grrls don't try. If grrls wanted to create really cool games, there are plenty of open source (free) game engines available, with which to experiment and gain experience. Or, they could hack/crack existing game engines, and start building their games. Instead, grrls just accept the games that are on the market, then whine about the lack of women in the gaming industry because it's fashionable.
How do you think guys get experience? There's a game builder course at Berkeley?
Start coding something. If grrls won't play it, then maybe you'll have to admit that guyz have all the cool ideas, huh?
It's easier for ethnic and gender minorities to get grants and loans from the government to start up a business than it is for white males, after all. Go for it. Put my tax money to good use. I'd rather see you start up a feminine oriented gaming company, than to see a bunch of losers getting thousands of dollars worth of discounts so that they can buy automobiles from a failed induestry.
Your walls mean nothing to us.